Tobin Van Ostern | T-VO It: The Blog

Over the past year or two, there’s been a shift in how people find TV Shows and Movies to watch on their computer.  Typically, downloading through torrents or file sharing programs was the preferred option.  However, besides the legal risks, this was also a pretty slow process.

Recently however, the shift has been to watching such movies via websites that stream the content.  With this method, you don’t need to download anything and you can start watching your content immediately.

Here are some of my favorite websites for viewing television shows or movies online:

1.  SurfTheChannel (www.surfthechannel.com):  This website has an amazing array of content, with its strength being TV Shows.  Many of the movies and shows have multiple versions and new releases are posted very quickly.  Additionally, all movies are displayed on the website with its built-in media tool so you are not required to go to other unknown websites.

2.  Watch-Movies (www.watch-movies.net):  As the name implies, while lacking on the TV front, Watch-Movies has a huge selection of movies.  It is particularily good for finding movies out on DVD but is decent for new movies as well.  Each movie has multiple versions and the site’s rating system allows you to quickly see which versions are still working and which aren’t.  Some of the movies are only available if you download the Veogh-Player.  However, having done so I have to say it is indeed a free player and the quality of the movies that are available on it (only 5-minute preview otherwise) make the download worth it.  I set the program not to automatically start with Windows and only open it when I need to watch a movie from the site.

3.  All You See (www.alluc.org):  This website has a decent array of both movies and television shows.  Every link leads to an outside website.  The site doesn’t have a great system for figuring out when links go dead, and it sometimes takes some work to find all the parts of the same movie.  However, even though the interface is confusing it sometimes has those hard to find copies that a more main-stream website does not, and thus still makes my list.

4.  QuickSilverScreen: (www.quicksilverscreen.com):  I don’t personally use this website, but have heard enough good reviews from friends to make it worth mentioning.  They seem to have a quick and easy selection of a variety of both tv shows and movies.  My only complaint is that quality sometimes appears to be low or viewing speed slow.  With that said, it’s a quality website that is definitely worth checking out.

5.  ?

I’m sure there are other websites out there that I’m not aware of, if I missed something good let me know and I’ll add it to the post.  Generally though, those 4 websites have pretty much anything you’ll ever need.

Why The Switch? Well the first reason is that allowing other people to download movies or tv shows you have put on a filesharing program, a torrent, etc.., is illegal.  The same is true if you post it on a website you host.  However, the difference is that none of the above websites host any content themselves.  Thus, my understanding is that they are not violating any laws as they are linking to external websites (hosted in other countries) which actually host the videos.  You, the viewer, are not sharing content either.

Disclaimer:  I have no idea what the actual legal rules that apply are, and do my best to follow the laws the best as I can understand them, you should do likewise.  See movies in theaters and support them.  Many TV Shows are also available off of the network websites such as www.nbc.com, etc.., so check them out!